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.

V04-T16a Don't Give It Up

.....The link between this track and the last appears to be label samplers.

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 16

• 03:46 "DON'T GIVE IT UP" (Jeff Connolly)
• performed by :Willie Alexander [and the Space Negroes?]
• original source: VA 2LP PLAY NEW ROSE FOR ME New Rose ROSE 100 (France) 1986
• and my source: the same

.....According to the notes I took when I made this compilation tape, this was recorded at Sounds Interesting, Cambridge, Mass. by Erik Lindgren in June 1986. I frankly, though I did remember the song even before reviewing these tapes for this blog project, I couldn't remember anything about the song. I'll just copy the rest of the notes here:

....."The other musicians on this track are Roger Miller (Mission of Burma), Erik Lindgren (Birdsongs of the Mesozoic), Aram Heller and Boby Bear. I can verify all but Heller as being in the Space Negroes and Heller probably was as well. The band was a Lindgren project of no particular fixed line-up. These gypsies (and others) surface on recordings by Moving Parts, No Man and who-knows-how-many pseudonymous pick-up bands and one-off outings to be found on the numerous compilations to come out of the area each year since the Ford administration.

....."This particular compilation is from the French New Rose label, similar but not as elaborate as its predecessor, VA 2LP LA VIE EN ROSE, which was used on the first volume of this cassette series. While LA VIE... was on rose colored vinyl in a rose colored box, PLAY NEW ROSE... was on black vinyl in a single sleeve. The one remarkable feature it has is that all the songs on it are covers, including two written by Willie Alexander and four by Bo Diddley. "DON'T GIVE IT UP" is a cover of the Lyres' first single (from 1979) which was finally reissued on CD this year on SOME LYRES (Taang! T82). The Lyres were one of those bands that called to mind that line from the movie 'Spinal Tap': You saw exactly how many people have been in this band over the years. Thirty-seven people have been in this band over the years. Purely on the basis of the lyrics, this is an odd choice for a first single, but not a bad irony for ending this collection."

.....I wrote that in 1994. All these years later there is a Lyres website and I've learned a few things from it. First of all the song was the B-side of that first single. That doesn't contradict factually anything I wrote above but it does mean that I was off the mark on the last sentence. While it would have been an odd choice for an A-side no one expects a B-side to be some kind of mission statement. It was more likely an epilogue to Connolly's previous band, DMZ. Also, the movie quote? Turns out the number of band members is closer to twenty-seven, but I think the basic idea behind using the quote is still valid. Oh, and one of those band members? Aram Heller. Small world.

.....When I posted last year about the tracks that I found on LA VIE EN ROSE, I looked around on line to find out what the status on the label was. I didn't get a definitive answer but it looked as though it existed as a legal entity but had not done new releases for awhile. The most recent project could find was something I already had, the boxed set VA 4CD NEW ROSE STORY 1980-2000 New Rose/Last Call 3062312 (France) 2005. On it you'll find Willie Alexander playing "BE-BOP A LULA" and the Lyres performing "DON'T GIVE IT UP" from their 1984 album ON FYRE. Last Call has also reissued PLAY NEW ROSE FOR ME on CD by dropping three songs to fit it on one disc and thankfully this cover by Willie Alexander was one of the songs they kept.

.....One closing interstitial and we will have concluded this volume.

Hüsker Dü "...Means 'Do You Remember?'"

.....Happy Record Store Day! Vinyl has been making a bit of a comeback in recent years and no one has been more surprised than the retailers who sell it. In retrospect it makes a perverse kind of sense that a generation who grew up downloading music for free would be mystified that there is a format out there that isn't even capable of supporting anti-copying encryption. Not only that, but there's tons-- literally tons-- of back catalog being sold by the pound in thrift stores and yard sales all over the world. It hardly matters that it can't be transported if you can transfer it to an iPod or other device. In fact, if you're accustomed to listening to the AM radio-like flatness of an MP3 signal, then the old bugaboo of surface noise is probably a non-issue as well.

.....This blog started about a month after last year's Record Store Day, so I never really referenced it. I didn't want to just pass it by, even though the blog is about a series of cassettes that weren't compiled for retail purposes. The fact is, many of the songs I've blogged about (and will continue to, trust me) made their way onto the tapes because I could only find them on vinyl (or flexis) and wanted to make them more portable and accessible. Record stores, including those that sold used (well, especially those that sold used), were an irreplaceable source for those. Finding new music you might like is infinitely easier if you can spot a familiar name in the liner notes or jacket credits while browsing in a store. Electronic sources often don't include liner notes and those that do only reveal them after loading times which, no matter how powerful your computer is, can't compare to the ease of holding something and flipping it over.

.....So, how to celebrate records with just one day's blog? Well, I could always renew my call to reissue the Giorno Poetry Systems catalog on CD. There's fewer than 100 vinyl titles total, maybe no more than 60 or 70, yet less than a dozen have made it to CD. Because their excellent anthologies always contained otherwise unavailable recordings by both famous and obscure artists, I routinely consulted my sparse collection of GPS titles when planning a career retrospective tape or looking for some kind of change of pace track for a 'various artists' tape. If reconfigured, the entire label might fit on 40 CD's, and many of them could be devoted to single artists. There are some musicians who have larger catalogs than that just by themselves (Zappa and Bowie come to mind). Many more artists only appeared sparingly. Some had recording commitments elsewhere, some generally worked in other media. One of the many bigger names to make a rare visit was Hüsker Dü.

.....Warner Brothers is issuing a special "Side By Side" vinyl single for Record Store Day that will pair Green Day's last-decade cover of "DON'T WANT TO KNOW IF YOU ARE LONELY" with the Hüsker Dü original on it's silver anniversary. My hair turned a little more silver when I heard that one. Since Green Day probably has fans who weren't born when that song came out, maybe I should share a crash course on Hüsker Dü in the form of a compilation program. It could be timely; Bob Mould just appeared in a Foo Fighters documentary in which he's seen contributing vocals to the recording of their recently released album. They've been hitting the talk show circuit pretty aggressively, so it's not impossible that Bob's name and his old band might pop up. Weirdly, the FF's appeared on the Daily Show without dropping his name (Mould wrote and performed the familiar Daily Show theme music). I'm not certain when I put this compilation together, but I can confirm that it was after the last of the "So, What Kind..." cassettes. (For what it's worth, the previously posted Cramps compilation was probably put together at the time I was finishing the tape with Volumes 3 and 4.) I'll put it at ten years ago. So, gather all the spiky-haired grandkids around, here we go...

.....For the uninitiated, Hüsker Dü was three people:

• [M]= Bob Mould: Guitar and vocals
• [N]= Greg Norton: Bass and vocals
• [H]= Grant Hart: Drums and vocals

.....I'll use those initials for songwriting credits. Anyone unfamiliar with my format notation will find a helpful key at the bottom of the page. My apologies to anyone using automated translating software to read this, since my use of abbreviations might confuse the software. I can only suggest first reading this verbiage in your own language, then reverting the page to English so that the notation will remain unaltered. The compilation was made with two 90-minute cassettes. I'm going to precede each track with an alpha-numeric. If this compilation had ever been pressed on vinyl, the letter would represent the 'side' and the number would represent the track. Every two vinyl 'sides' complete one side of the cassettes. After listing the programs, I'll suggest configurations for CD formats.

....."Everyone Is An Authority"

• [A01] 01:57 DO YOU REMEMBER? (M)
• .....demo recorded live by Bill Bruce in a St. Paul Basement, 1980
• [A02] 04:54 AMUSEMENT (M)
• .....B-side 7" Reflex [no#] Recorded live by Terry Katzman at Duffy's, Minneapolis, October 1980
• [A03] 04:33 STATUES (H)
• .....A-side 7" Reflex [no#] Recorded at Blackberry Way, Minneapolis, 1980
• [A04] 01:53 LET'S GO DIE (N)
• .....outtake from "Statues" sessions
• [A05] 02:02 ALL TENSED UP (M/N/H)
• [A06] 00:54 GUNS AT MY SCHOOL (M/N/H)
• [A07] 01:50 DO THE BEE (M/N/H)
• .....from mini-LP "Land Speed Record" New Alliance Records NAR007 (US?) 1981
• [A08] 02:52 IN A FREE LAND (M)
• [A09] 01:15 WHAT DO I WANT? (H)
• [A10] 01:11 M.I.C. (M)
• .....7" New Alliance Records NAR010 (US) 05/82
• [B01] 01:40 FROM THE GUT (M/N)
• [B02] 02:14 EVERYTHING FALLS APART (M)
• [B03] 01:42 TARGET (M)
• [B04] 00:30 PUNCH DRUNK (M)
• [B05] 01:24 AFRAID OF BEING WRONG (M)
• .....from mini-LP "Everything Falls Apart" Reflex [no#] (US) 01/83
• [B06] 02:25 REAL WORLD (M)
• [B07] 04:40 DIANE (H)
• .....from EP "Metal Circus" SST Records SST020 (US) 12/83
• [B08] 01:59 WON'T CHANGE (?)
• .....an outtake from the "Metal Circus" sessions, recorded 01/83
• .....from VALP "A Diamond Hidden In The Mouth Of A Corpse" Giorno Poetry Systems GPS035 (US/C) 1985
• [B09] 03:56 EIGHT MILES HIGH (Gene Clark, Roger McGuinn, David Crosby)
• [B10] 02:54 MASOCHISM WORLD (H/M)
• .....7" SST Records SST025 (US) 04/84

....."All The Ways Of Communicating"

• [C01] 00:47 ONE STEP AT A TIME (M/H)
• [C02] 03:58 WHATEVER (M)
• [C03] 04:27 WHAT'S GOING ON? (H)
• .....demos recorded Summer 1983
• [C04] 01:24 GRANTED (?)
• [C05] 02:08 SOME KIND OF FUN (?)
• [C06] 03:12 DOZEN BEATS ELEVEN (?)
• .....outtakes prior to "Zen Arcade" Sessions, recorded Fall 1983
• [C07] 01:41 NEVER TALKING TO YOU AGAIN (H)
• [C08] 02:03 THE BIGGEST LIE (M)
• [C09] 02:32 SOMEWHERE (M/H)
• [D01] 00:54 MONDAY WILL NEVER BE THE SAME (M)
• [D02] 02:43 PINK TURNS TO BLUE (H)
• [D03] 04:28 TURN ON THE NEWS (H)
• .....from 2LP "Zen Arcade" SST Records SST027 (US) 07/84
• [D04] 04:03 CELEBRATED SUMMER (M)
• [D05] 03:05 THE GIRL WHO LIVES ON HEAVEN HILL (H)
• [D06] 02:48 BOOKS ABOUT UFO'S (H)
• [D07] 02:08 IF I TOLD YOU (H/M)
• [D08] 02:34 NEW DAY RISING (M/Hüsker Dü)
• .....from LP "New Day Rising" SST Records SST031 (US) 01/85
• [D09] 01:40 ERASE TODAY (?)
• .....outtake from the "New Day Rising" sessions, recorded 07/84
• .....from VALP "The Blasting Concept Vol. II" SST Records SST043 (US) 1986

....."All This We've Done For You"

• [E01] 05:06 HELTER SKELTER (John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
• .....recorded live at 1st Ave., Minneapolis on 01/30/85
• .....B-side 12" Warner Bros. 9 20446-0 A (US) 02/86
• [E02] 02:42 MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL (M)
• [E03] 01:46 LOVE IS ALL AROUND (Sonny Curtis)
• .....7" SST Records SST051 (US) 08/86
• [E04] 03:03 FLEXIBLE FLYER (H)
• [E05] 02:46 HATE PAPER DOLL (M)
• [E06] 02:36 FLIP YOUR WIG (M)
• .....from LP "Flip Your Wig" SST Records SST055 (US) 09/85
• [E07] 02:43 TICKET TO RIDE (John Lennon/Paul McCartney)
• .....recorded live at 1st Ave., Minneapolis on 01/30/85
• .....from VA7"EP "NME's Big Four" NME GIV3 (UK) 02/86
• [E08] 03:29 DON'T WANT TO KNOW IF YOU ARE LONELY (H)
• .....A-side 12" Warner Bros. 9 20446-0 A (US) 02/86
• [F01] 08:24 ALL WORK AND NO PLAY (M)
• .....B-side 12" Warner Bros. 9 20446-0 A (US) 02/86
• [F02] 06:07 HARDLY GETTING OVER IT (M)
• .....from LP "Candy Apple Grey" Warner Bros. 9 25385-1 (US) 03/86
• [F03] 04:27 SORRY SOMEHOW (H)
• [F04] 03:09 ALL THIS I'VE DONE FOR YOU (M)
• .....7" Warner Bros. W8612 (UK) 09/86

....."Coming Back For The Sake Of Retrieving"

• [G01] 02:39 COULD YOU BE THE ONE? (M)
• .....A-side 12" Warner Bros. W8456T (UK) 01/87
• [G02] 01:28 [track A2, introduces members and double LP]
• .....from 2LP "The Warehouse Interview" Warner Bros. Music Show WBMS145 (US) 1987
• [G03] 02:47 EVERYTIME (N)
• [G04] 03:13 CHARITY, CHASTITY, PRUDENCE & HOPE (H)
• .....B-side 12" Warner Bros. W8456T (UK) 01/87
• [G05] 03:20 FRIEND, YOU'VE GOT TO FALL (M)
• [G06] 03:33 SHE FLOATED AWAY (H)
• .....from 2LP "Warehouse: Songs And Stories" Warner Bros. 9 25544-1 (US) 01/87
• [G07] 01:25 [track D5, losing your mind on tour]
• .....from 2LP "The Warehouse Interview" Warner Bros. Music Show WBMS145 (US) 1987
• [G08] 04:22 ICE COLD ICE (M)
• .....A-side 7" Warner Bros. W8276 (UK) 06/87
• [H01] 02:34 [track B1, regarding printed lyrics]
• .....from 2LP "The Warehouse Interview" Warner Bros. Music Show WBMS145 (US) 1987
• [H02] 08:51 HARE KRSNA (H/M/N)
• .....from promo-only compilation CD "Do You Remember?" Warner Bros. PRO-CD 6853 (US) 1994
• [H03] 02:47 AIN'T NO WATER IN THE WELL (M)
• [H04] 02:11 IT'S NOT FUNNY ANYMORE (H)
• [H05] 03:22 NOW THAT YOU KNOW ME (H)
• [H06] 02:25 BACK FROM SOMEWHERE (H)
• .....from CD "The Living End" Warner Bros. 9 45582-2 (US) 04/94
• [H07] 01:30 [track C2, assessing your own work]
• .....from 2LP "The Warehouse Interview" Warner Bros. Music Show WBMS145 (US) 1987

.....There are no songwriting credits for the interview segments, obviously. For more information on the band, I recommend the link on the right side of the screen. Now, that's a proper discography.

.....Earlier I promised recommended CD configurations for those of you playing at home. Here they are:

1. CD1: Use tracks A(all), B(all) and C01-C06
2. CD2: Use tracks C07-C09, D(all), E(all) and F01
3. CD3: Use tracks F02-F04, G(all) and H(all)

.....Most of the singles can be found on the albums. There should have been a comprehensive boxed set for the group years ago, but due to their catalog being almost evenly split between SST and Warner Bros., that's not likely to happen in my lifetime. What should be made available is a CD collecting all the Warner Bros. non-album tracks. I think some of those songs have never been released in their native U.S., let alone on disc. 90% of what's here should be readily available with a little hunting, though.

V04-T09 September Song

.....I've used a large number of covers over the course of this compilation series, but this one has nearly half a century between the original and the recording here.

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 8

• 04:18 "SEPTEMBER SONG" (lyrics: Maxwell Anderson, music: Kurt Weill)
• performed by Lou Reed
• original source: VALP LOST IN THE STARS A&M SP9 5104 (US) 1985
• and my source: VACD LOST IN THE STARS A&M CD5104 (US) 1985(?)

.....If Americans know Kurt Weill at all it's probably for the song "MACK THE KNIFE" from the musical "Threepenny Opera", written in Europe with Bertolt Brecht. When the Nazis began rising to power Weill's productions became targets of their vandalism and he immigrated to the United States in 1935. Soon after, he met Maxwell Anderson. In Anderson, he not only found a new friend in an unfamiliar country, but potentially a prolific collaborator. They each bought a house in an artists' enclave in upstate New York and began working, but Weill was increasingly being offered lucrative work on Hollywood soundtracks he would have been foolish to pass up. He spent the last third of his relatively short life (1900-1950) in America and his only two collaborations with Anderson form bookends to that period. The first musical was "Knickerbocker Holiday"(1938), the source of the song "SEPTEMBER SONG". The second musical was a musical adaption of Alan Paton's "Cry The Beloved Country" that they called "Lost In The Stars"(1949), the source of this album's title track.

.....Producer Hal Willner made something of a cottage industry out of tribute albums, beginning in the early eighties and continuing into the past decade. Following this one and SGT PEPPER KNEW MY FATHER, a non-Willner production using post-punk British musicians in 1987 to recreate the Beatles' album track by track for its twentieth anniversary, there was a flurry of artist tributes on small labels like Communion on which current alt-rock acts acknowledged their (sometimes obvious) debts to then-under-exposed acts like Captain Beefheart, Syd Barrett and the Velvet Underground. After the flurry came the deluge. I have actually lost count of the number of reggae-only tribute albums there are to Pink Floyd (I think it was four when I stopped paying attention). Willner's were almost always superior. He had an uncanny knack for matching just the right performer to the material, usually a performer you never would have thought to consider yourself but who, in retrospect, seems perfect. For instance, on the 1989 Disney tribute STAY AWAKE he paired Sinead O'Connor with "SOMEDAY MY PRINCE WILL COME" and Tom Waits with the Seven Dwarves' "HEIGH-HO", both adapted from "Snow White". At the time Lou Reed recorded this he had been working professionally for 20 years (almost 30 if you count the singles he made as a teenager) and almost never recorded covers. (Just after this was an ill-advised remake of "SOUL MAN", but that's rarely heard outside the soundtrack album of the same name.) Whatever possessed Willner to enlist Reed to interpret musical theater was something that can't be adequately described by trite phrases like "thinking outside of the box". It requires not only an intimate familiarity with the material to be covered but also with the panoply of artists available from which to choose (and then persuade to participate).

.....Say, I mentioned a tribute to Disney earlier. There's a whole different kind of tribute coming up next.

V04-T08 Love Is All Around

.....At the time I put this tape together I was sorely tempted to pair this song with the completely different song by the same title by the Troggs. I'm not sure why I didn't; it may have been because I had just used one original hit from the 1960's and four sides into a compilation series that emphasizes the obscure it would seem unusual to have two so close together. You'll see that not everything I chose to use was rare or unusual. Avoiding the popular or commercially successful music in my collection wouldn't be genuinely representative of what I was listening to any more than using it exclusively.

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 8

• 01:46 "LOVE IS ALL AROUND" (Sonny Curtis)
• performed by Hüsker Dü
• original source: B-side 7" SST 051 (US) August 1985
• and my source: CDEP EIGHT MILES HIGH/MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL SST CD270 (US) 1990

.....My original notes from 1994 still look relevant:

"Anybody who doesn't recognize this as the theme to the Mary Tyler Moore Show, hold out your hands to be slapped. Bonus points, however, to any who know that the connection between the fictional Mary Richards and the late Hüsker Dü is that they were both based in Minneapolis. Extra bonus points and a big wet kiss to anyone who recognized the style, which is pretty obscured here, of the song's author, Sonny Curtis. Yes, it's the same Sonny who wrote 'I FOUGHT THE LAW', better known from records by The Bobby Fuller Four and The Clash.

"Poor Minneapolis; so much talent, so little focus or cohesion. What is the Minneapolis sound? Hüsker Dü? Prince? Garrison Keillor? Is there some common unifying bond or trait amongst those three that I'm missing? I doubt it.

"Anyway, this track has made the rounds. This and another Hüsker Dü single were compiled onto a four-song 10" EP which in turn was reissued as a CD. All four songs are also found on an indispensable Various Artists CD called SEVEN-INCH WONDERS OF THE WORLD."

.....Now back in 2011, I've added a link to a fan-generated Hüsker Dü Database that provides descriptions of the various formats and configurations in which this recording has been made available. The reference to a Minneapolis sound came from a tendency in the late 1980's to promote upcoming bands by associating them with established bands who've come up through the same club circuit. In some cases the comparisons were valid; scenes would develop with a large number of musicians in one area forming and reforming bands by exchanging members and playing a handful of venues to, by and large, the same audiences. Inevitably they would share the same references and musical vocabulary. Today, with new groups promoting themselves nationally (and internationally) online, I'm not sure the concept of regional sounds has any relevance anymore.

.....Tomorrow, another love song, but with an international touch.

V04-T06 Academy Fight Song

.....You may have noticed that since this volume began that even those songs recorded in the 70's and 80's were from sources released within a couple years of 1990. This track is no different. A big part of the reason is that I was making last minute substitutions, as I've mentioned here before. I think that subconsciously I was also wary of being perceived as someone living in the past. It's just that if any ongoing collection is to be genuinely well-rounded then whatever in it is contemporary, regardless of when 'contemporary' happens to fall, is always going to be a small part of the whole. And of course, even that will soon be part of the past. Since I had already attempted to play around with the dates by playing older recordings I decided to indulge myself with a contemporary cover of an older song before fishing around for older sources. I felt I had been behaving myself were the covers were concerned and this one isn't archly deconstructionist or remotely campy.

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 6

• 03:42 "ACADEMY FIGHT SONG" (Chris Conley)
• performed by R.E.M.
• original source: A-side 7" BOB32(UK)1992
• [free with magazine Bucketful of Brains issue #39/40(Mar-Apr/92)]
• and my source: the same

.....I'm going to reproduce my original liner notes again, with the exception that a specific institution's name will be redacted not merely for legal reasons but because it may no longer be an accurate reflection of campus life today. Also, Conley attended University of Rochester, NY and not the school discussed.

"Many British fanzines give flexi-discs (or used to, in the age of turntables). Few give hard-vinyl singles in picture sleeves. This live track opens with the announcement, "Mission Of Burma", the name of the band who recorded this song originally on their debut single [in 1980]. R.E.M., who are even better as a out-of-left-field-cover band than as radio hounds, do a pretty faithful job.

"I'm pretty sure that the song is about [a certain institution]-- the arrogance, cliques and hypocrisy. The 'fight' is against the academy, not for it. It was about this point in the tape that I realized how many overtures of rebellion I have been working into this thing. What distinguishes [this institution's] cliques (according to my personal experiences meeting people and the testimony of friends who were either students or professors) is an unavoidable sense of shallowness that comes from defining themselves in terms of others-- specifically what they choose not to like or else denigrate. It's not unheard of for a [~] student to confront someone with a laundry list of real or imagined personal faults the student feels that person should correct, and to react with shock and defensiveness if that person should have the nerve to tell them to fuck off.

"The song is sung from the perspective of someone wrestling against peer pressure to do exactly that; hence the line, 'I'm not judging you, I'm judging me'. The flip-side of the single, by the way, is a song by The Coal Porters."

That covers it. And for anyone reading who isn't from the northeast but knows that Mission Of Burma began their career in Boston, I should point out that the redacted school is not Harvard. Regardless of what national television may repeatedly tell you, Harvard is not in Boston, it's in Cambridge. On the other side of the Charles River. In another county. End of sermon.

V04-T01 A Door Is Ajar

.....A new year, a new volume. Let's dive in, shall we?

Volume 4: "THE LITTLE BROWN ONES ARE THORAZINE, GEORGE", track 1

• 00:40 "A DOOR IS AJAR"(Traditional, arranged by Kronos Quartet)
• performed by Kronos Quartet
• original source: CD WINTER WAS HARD Elektra/Nonesuch 79181(US)1988
• and my source: the same

.....According to my notes from 1994:

"This is not an excerpt-- this is an entire and complete track which closes what I think is Kronos' third album for Nonesuch. I've used it to open part four because I think that it's far more appropriate-- this is essentially what is heard when someone has just entered a car, and that implies that a journey is about to begin. What most intrigued me about this track (typical archivist) is the credit-- 'Traditional'. Is this not the new folk music?

"The person who actually wrote the exact words used labored in corporate anonymity and is not credited anywhere in owners' manuals or other company publications. The car's manufacturer probably never thought to copyright the recording. The process of establishing a claim of ownership (let alone pursuing it in the courts should someone 'steal' it) would probably cost more than exclusive ownership would generate. Even though it doesn't create a profit, the recording is played over and over, heard by millions, recognized instantly.

"Is this not the new folk music? Also curious is how this could be 'arranged' for a string quartet.

"This was supposed to kick off a theme of car songs, but many key selections were missing from my collection, so I did some stream of consciousness reprogramming."

.....The next track suggests where the car theme might have taken us.

V03-T14 Why Does The Sun Shine?

.....These compilations were made with a greater degree of spontaneity than cassettes I put together for a particular artist or theme. I would usually jot down song titles and playing times on scrap paper 4-6 songs ahead of whatever I was dubbing at the moment so that I wouldn't be surprised by the tape running out. If you add up the playing times for any of these ten volumes you should get roughly 45 minutes for just that reason. Aside from that one concession to planning they were programmed on the fly mostly by instinct.

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 14

• 02:54 "WHY DOES THE SUN SHINE?" (Hy Zarat, Lou Singer)
• performed by They Might Be Giants
• original source: CD5 Elektra 66272-2(US)1993
• and my source: the same

.....While recording the 2009 album CD/DVD HERE COMES SCIENCE Disney Sound DOOO456600(US)9/09 the band TMBG was informed that this song from their back catalog was factually incorrect, despite the fact that they covered it from a 1950's educational project. They had even performed it for about twenty years without anyone pointing out that scientific consensus about the composition of the sun has changed in the last half century. If it wasn't for the fact that HERE COMES SCIENCE was intended for children it would not have come under closer scrutiny than most of their releases, as it did. Not wanting to drop a popular song from their repertoire, they coupled it with a new original song, "WHY DOES THE SUN REALLY SHINE?", which was not only correct information but also an object lesson about the greatest strength of science: everything is subject to reexamination and truth is what can be demonstrated, not merely what we are told. The full story behind the remake is here, with links to the history of the original:

http://tmbw.net/wiki/Why_Does_The_Sun_Really_Shine%3F

.....What I wrote about it at the time was that "After listening to this tape a few times I've become painfully aware how this song sticks out like a sore thumb. I just couldn't help it. Aside from a few left over singles from the 1992 APOLLO 19 album, this EP was the band's total output last year: one original song and three covers including this, the title track." Well, that's overstating it. I have since found a two-song vinyl Christmas single from the very end of the year and have learned from their site linked above that a mini-album length cassette of demos for their JOHN HENRY album leaked out and was widely bootlegged until they made it available by podcast. There were a paucity of stray tracks as well, but all in all not much for a normally prolific band. I didn't know how many more of these compilations I would be making and I couldn't imagine not having TMBG in there somewhere. While it didn't fit as I'd expected it would ("TODDLER HIGHWAY" might have worked had I thought of it) I can take some comfort in the knowledge that I gave an implicit endorsement early on for a song that proved to have considerable durability.

V03-T08 Skeet Surfing

.....The reason for including this track? Honestly, I can't imagine a reason not to.

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 8

• 02:58 "SKEET SURFING" (Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Chuck Berry)
• performed by Val Kilmer [with Flo & Eddie]
• original source: EP TOP SECRET! Passport PB 3603 (US) 1984
• and my source: the same

.....Actually, I don't believe Wilson, Love or Berry wrote those lyrics. They were probably written by the Zucker brothers, who wrote the script. Obviously the music is an amalgamation of multiple Beach Boys songs such as "SURFIN' USA", "SHUT DOWN" and "CATCH A WAVE", among others. And the Chuck Berry credit? That's from the Beach Boys' own albums. They borrowed so heavily from Berry while writing their early material that a few songs give him a co-writing credit despite him not having any direct involvement.

.....Oh, and that is actor Val Kilmer singing his own part-- a much younger Val Kilmer, long before playing Batman. In fact, I think this is before playing anything else, his first screen credit. I don't know if he got a lucky break or if he put everything he had into that movie, but it turned out fantastic. That may be hard to believe in a post-"Scream" world where genre parody movies are a dime a dozen and scrape the bottom of the humor barrel. There was a time when genre parody was only approached by people with something to say and the means to say it: "Sleeper", "High Anxiety", "Little Big Man", "Spinal Tap", etc. In "Top Secret" the target is vanity vehicles for rock musicians crossed with wartime espionage films. The result is a gleeful flood of anachronisms, like watching a dozen Hollywood-made period costume epics at once. Medieval knights with chrome armor? Hercules with a wristwatch? "Top Secret" will see you those and raise you a 50's style Elvis character using 60's style surf music to fight 40's style Nazi's who are running a 70's style East Germany.

.....Aiding and abetting on the soundtrack are Flo & Eddie (Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan), former members of the Turtles who went on to perform with Frank Zappa and T. Rex after a record executive told them they were getting fat and therefore couldn't work as musicians anymore. Somebody of their caliber would have been necessary to evoke the vocal harmonies of a Beach Boys record, since the Wilsons and company worked liked dogs rehearsing their voices. Whereas their British Invasion counterparts worshipped Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, Brian used the Four Freshman as his professional yardstick. Volman and Kaylan may have been forced to give up any hopes of being teen idols, but like every good parodist from Spike Jones to Weird Al, their technical abilities were every bit the equal of their targets.

.....Oh, and we're not done with Elvis just yet. Not by a long shot.

V03-T05 People Like Us

.....The silver anniversary for this item is bearing down like a steam-roller with no mention of a reissue, remastered or otherwise. At the time I put Volume 3 together (1994) I thought it was strange that this wasn't on CD. A charting band who would no longer make new material; a guest vocalist with a hit TV show at the time; an album never released on CD in eight years and a wealth of potential bonus tracks to sweeten the package, maybe even justify a front-tier list price. It's now been three times that long-- twenty-four years-- and the whole shebang is still long out of print.

Volume 3: A KINDER, GENTLER ZERO TOLERANCE, track 5

• 04:23 "PEOPLE LIKE US" (David Byrne)
• performed by Talking Heads w/ John Goodman
• original source: B-side, 7" Sire 9 28629-7 (US) 1986
• and my source: the same

.....Talking Heads released REMAIN IN LIGHT, one of the most- if not the most- ambitious albums of their career, in 1980 and toured to support it through 1981 followed by a sabbatical from the group to release solo projects that year. They reconvened to release SP EAK IN GI N TO NGU ES in 1983 and film the subsequent tour (which became STOP MAKING SENSE). The three years' difference between one tour and the next shouldn't have meant much, but apparently it did. The Heads have always had a reputation as a cerebral band, at least by rock standards. Yet, even for multi-instrumentalist college graduates the activities of recording and touring in a rock band lend themselves to artificially protracted adolescence and arrested development. That's why the hiatus between their first four studio albums (1977-1980) and last four (1983-1988) is worth mentioning. Following their solo projects, they seemed to have considered their own adulthood. And, being academics, rather than run screaming or go into denial, they picked it apart and looked at it under glasses. Themes of domesticity and family relationships permeate the lyrics and the music is less arch and angular and more pliant and sinuous, about continuation and flow and sustaining rather than distinction and precision. And of course the band members would have been fluent enough in art history to make the connections between their own thirty-something nesting inclinations and the Dutch genre painting movement of the 1600's and its potential for liberating the artist through the mundane.

.....Following the tour film came a pair of projects that drew on this new appreciation for the homestead. The first collection of songs became the album LITTLE CREATURES (1985), self-contained songs that occasionally related to each other through the aforementioned themes. The second project required its songs to contribute to a central narrative which became the skeleton of a higher concept, multi-media campaign that took advantage of their label's parent company, Warner Brothers, to carry out. Under the umbrella title TRUE STORIES it consisted of: (1) an album of songs recorded by the band; (2) concept videos for select songs; (3) a feature film for theatrical release that incorporates both the concept videos and performances of the album's songs by cast members instead of the band; (4) a companion book to the movie; (5) a soundtrack album mostly containing instrumental scoring; and (6) three vinyl singles (each in 7" and 12" formats-- so, six singles total) spread out from the summer of 1986 to the spring of 1987 to keep the movie and album on people's minds. There were probably other bells and whistles tied to Warner's cable and publisher empire as well, such as the David Byrne cover of TIME Magazine for October 27, 1986. According to publisher Richard B. Thomas, it was only the second self-portrait ever allowed in the magazine's history (the first was a Robert Rauschenberg collage in 1976). Byrne himself gets six pages by Jay Cocks (incorporating a one page review by Richard Corliss of the movie, directed by Byrne). Related to that are an additional two pages on avant-pop theater coming out of New York at the time, written by Michael Walsh and name-dropping Laurie Anderson (also on Warner's) and Robert Wilson.

.....Each of the three singles tied to the TRUE STORIES project featured A-sides from the band's album and B-sides selected from the cast's performances. The first was the track used here: John Goodman singing "PEOPLE LIKE US". Yes, that John Goodman, the guy who went on to play Roseanne's husband on the long-running TV show. Professional large person. Grossly underestimated actor John Goodman. "Raising Arizona", "Barton Fink", "The Big Lebowski",... um, "King Ralph"...well, you're reading this on a computer, aren't you? Just go to IMDB and knock yourself out. ... You back yet? SEE? I told you. Underestimated.

.....Trying to get any of the non-band tracks is problematic. The soundtrack album is notoriously unavailable, all the more criminal because in addition to the presence of Talking Heads members and Tubes' drummer Prairie Prince, there's a performance by Kronos Quartet and a composition by Meredith Monk. In 1999 the 12" remixes of "HEY NOW" and "RADIOHEAD" appeared on the CD 12X12 ORIGINAL REMIXES. In 2005 there was a cube-shaped box issued containing DualDisc remasters of the eight studio albums. The remaster of TRUE STORIES contained the standard movie version of "RADIOHEAD" as well as "PAPA LEGBA". Early in 2006, as the DualDisc editions were being released individually, iTunes made available the unimaginatively titled BONUS RARITIES AND OUTTAKES, which included this Goodman vocal-- still with no physical disc. The movie itself has been available on DVD for awhile, but I've only seen it offered in the chopped version shown on cable. Not only is it reformatted for television instead of widescreen, but the funeral scene at the end is removed completely. Here's hoping that restorations can be made available, preferably in a single package and preferably before everyone who would care is dead.

V02-T10 Sweet Jane

.....We lost Jim Carroll last year. The fact that he died on September 11th in Manhattan means that he may have been overshadowed in the electronic media, where lazy and sensationalist editors no doubt had video retrospectives of the 2001 attacks prepared weeks in advance, if not left over from the year before. It was in all the papers, though.

Volume 2: "WE'RE ALL GOING TO JAIL FOR THIS, AREN'T WE?" track 10

• 4:11 "SWEET JANE" (Lou Reed)
• performed by Jim Carroll
• original source: LP I WRITE YOUR NAME Atlantic 80123-1 (US) Jan. 16th, 1984
• and my source: CD I WRITE YOUR NAME Atlantic 80123-2 (US) [no date; 1991?]

.....I promise, this will be the last cover tune for this volume of the series.

.....Jim Carroll knew Lou Reed personally when the Velvet Underground first recorded this song (notice how the name 'Lou' is used in this version where the name 'Jim' is used in the original). Carroll was a teenaged junkie poetry prodigy at the time, often in or around performance spaces in New York. About that time, in 1968, Valerie Solanas tried to murder Velvets patron Andy Warhol, prompting him to reverse his earlier relatively-open-door policy at The Factory. Warhol's prior willingness to host a large number and broad range of eccentrics resulted in these people playing off of and energizing each other. When he closed the doors, that flow of creativity he had cultivated couldn't just stop. It came out of the basements and occupied the clubs. Carroll and Reed were both productive creatively before meeting Warhol, but in the 1970's they had an audience beyond the Factory that they didn't have before.

.....The album that this comes from is the last one entirely of music from Carroll. He continued playing with bands but those recordings were released on various artists collections and hybrids of music and spoken-word performance such as POOLS OF MERCURY.

V02-T07b Batman

.....I expected people to recognize the tune but not necessarily the band.

Volume 2: "WE'RE ALL GOING TO JAIL FOR THIS, AREN'T WE?", track 7b

• 01:27 BATMAN (Neal Hefti)
• performed by The Who
• original source: EP READY, STEADY, WHO! Reaction 592001 (UK) Nov. 11, 1966
• and my source: CD RARITIES 1966-1972 Vols. 1 and 2 Polydor 847670-2 (UK) 1991

.....Like most bands appearing on the BBC's "Ready, Steady, Go!" television series, The Who recorded their music at the network's studios a few days in advance and then lip-synched to themselves on the show. That was mid-October, 1966. Their management intended to release an EP of the studio recordings to coincide with the airing but ran into legal hassles. It would take less time and mean fewer headaches to actually rerecord everything from scratch and rush release it, which is what they did. It's not surprising that some fans came to assume that the Reaction EP was taken from the show anyway, despite switching out some of the songs for others.

.....On the show they appeared to be playing "BATMAN", "BUCKET T", "I'M A BOY" and "DISGUISES". They also goofed around to Cliff Richard's song "SUMMER HOLIDAY". There are incomplete bits of the instrumental "COBWEBS AND STRANGE". The finale was intended to be a medley of their own "MY GENERATION" in a medley with Elgar's "LAND OF HOPE AND GLORY", but for some reason the Elgar was replaced with "RULE BRITTANIA". The medley was too much of a pain to reproduce and "I'M A BOY" had just been an A-side and was likely still in stores, so those two were dropped and replaced with "BARBARA ANN" (to indulge Keith Moon's surf music fixation) and yet another version of "CIRCLES", probably to undercut the sales of earlier versions being released under different names by an ex-producer they were fighting in court.

.....In 1977 The Jam used "BATMAN" to close side one of their first album IN THE CITY. Considering their retro Mod image in the midst of height-of-punk London, this was clearly a nod to The Who and not to the Batman TV show. When The Jam broke up (really so that Paul Weller could form the even more retro Style Council) in 1982, The Who released what would be their last studio album for the foreseeable future and gave the first of many 'farewell' tours. In 1983 their old label in England released a matching pair of 'rarities' LP's to cash in on the tour. They were actually the non-album singles prior to the ODDS & SODS album, which may all have lapsed out of print at the time but were circulated in large numbers when originally released. The CD I own that combines the two albums was manufactured in 1991 and then imported to this country, which means I probably bought it shortly before making this mix tape. That would explain it being on my mind and at hand. (NOTE: The title of the previous volume of this tape series, "The Pitchfork Approach", was only half joking.) A quick trip to Amazon suggests that finding a copy might get expensive. In 1995 most of the EP (minus "CIRCLES") showed up as bonus tracks on the mono mix CD of the album A QUICK ONE. On the plus side, it includes an unused outtake of the "MY GENERATION"/"LAND OF HOPE AND GLORY" medley. That CD was supposedly rereleased a few years later in stereo but with identical packaging. Caveat Emptor.

.....Did I mention something about "height-of-punk London" just now? Hold that thought until tomorrow.

V02-T03 The Crying Game

.....Happy Birthday, Chris Spedding!

Volume 2: "WE'RE ALL GOING TO JAIL FOR THIS, AREN'T WE?", track 3

• 02:39 "THE CRYING GAME" (Geoff Stephens)
• performed by Chris Spedding
• original source: LP I'M NOT LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE RAK Records SRAK 542 (UK) Nov./80
• and my source: LP I'M NOT LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE Fan Club FC 055 (France) 1989

.....Most people probably know this song by the remake by Boy George used in the soundtrack for the movie of the same name. This lesser known cover was made roughly halfway between the Boy George version and the original. Geoff Stephens was a songwriter aspiring to more lucrative work as a producer when Dave Berry got a number 5 hit for Decca with "THE CRYING GAME", one of Stephens' songs, in the summer of 1964 in England. At about that time Stephens and Peter Eden went to a resort town to scout musical talent. Both had a financial interest in music publisher Southern Music which had a recording facility called Iver Records. At the resort they went to see a British blues band called Cops'n'Robbers but were more impressed by a teenage friend of theirs who played during their intermission: Donovan. While Stephens and Eden went about tricking this naive Scottish runaway into contracts that it would be charitable to describe as criminal, American Brenda Lee on the US Decca label had a minor hit with "THE CRYING GAME". Although it was used as the B-side of "THANKS A LOT", which didn't crack the top 40 either, her version charted further down in its own right in January 1965.

.....Chris Spedding is a prime example of a gun for hire. Like many great guitarists (Mick Ronson, Earl Slick, etc.) he has released a number of decent but often ignored solo albums over a long period while simultaneously doing prolific studio session and concert tour work as a sideman. The work they do for others usually succeeds both commercially and critically but because they don't have great singing voices and often rely on outside material to fill out albums, they can't translate the plaudits for outside work to their solo projects even when their arrangements and playing technique are impeccable.

.....After this I decided to use the covers more judiciously. Hearing something familiar from a different perspective is something that would be inevitable in any compilation that really reflected my music collection, but it loses its impact if the listener has a reason to expect it around every corner. The next track would be something truly original.

V02-T02 Purple Haze

.....I'm not certain, but this may be the only selection I've used in this series that was also performed live for a PBS fundraiser. It's definitely the only one introduced by a slightly baffled-looking Richard ('John-Boy Walton') Thomas.

Volume 2: "WE'RE ALL GOING TO JAIL FOR THIS, AREN'T WE?", track 2

• 02:52 "PURPLE HAZE" (Jimi Hendrix)
• performed by Kronos Quartet
• original source: CD KRONOS QUARTET Elektra/Nonesuch 9 79111-2 (US) 1986
• and my source: the same

.....Kronos is a string quartet devoted to 20th century composers. To many in classical music circles, they seemed to have come out of nowhere to minor superstardom when this album and its follow-up, "White Man Sleeps" came out. They had actually been recording for labels like CRI, Reference and Landmark for a few years. They were better known for working with Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Astor Piazzola but anyone from the 20th century was fair game. This got released as a vinyl promotional single for radio stations, unusual for a classical group at the time. It also became an in-concert favorite. It might even have been the impetus for putting them on the Elektra "Rubaiyat" compilation discussed in the notes to Volume 1; they did a cover of Television's "MARQUEE MOON" which I found disappointing. That was an excellent choice of material for a string quartet and had the potential to be hypnotic if arranged as a canon, but their version was actually shorter than the original. "PURPLE HAZE" is a mostly faithful arrangement, if not exactly a transcription, and it's not surprising that it translates well to live performance and that it has held up for them year to year.

V01-T13 Paranoid

.....Long before Gagas aspired to royalty they maintained a sacred Order...

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 13

• 02:41 "PARANOID" (Bill Ward, Ozzy Osbourne, Terry Butler, Tony Iommi)
• performed by The Holy Sisters Of The Gaga Dada
• original source: CD RADIO TOKYO TAPES Vol.4 Chameleon D2-74810 (US) 1989
• and my source: the same

.....Radio Tokyo was a studio in Los Angeles opened by Ralph Kellogg that put out compilations of original recordings made there. The Holy Sisters had released an album and an EP on BOMP!Records by the time this came out, but not much since. Some of the artists on this and previous volumes were unsigned at the time. This radical, cross-culturally arranged reworking of the Black Sabbath song put me in mind to use a Bart Simpson parody of their "Iron Man", but I couldn't find where I had put it. Not only that, but I was running out of tape on side 1. Tomorrow, the last full song and we'll be tied up by this weekend, I promise.

V01-T12 "All-Time Rock'n'Roll Classics Pt.4"

.....This compilation tape started out with a brief snippet of dialogue followed by a T. Rex cover by the Replacements. Although that cover was made for a stateside 12", my source for it was a double album label sampler from the French label New Rose, who distributed their records in Europe before they signed to a major. Although much of the sampler likewise drew material from the label's catalogue, some was recorded exclusively for it:

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 12

• 01:18 medley{"MANIA" (Martin Cowan)
• 00:00 medley{"ANARCHY IN THE UK" (Paul Cook, Steve Jones, John Lydon, Glen Matlock)
• 00:00 medley{"COPACABANA" (Jack Feldman, Barry Manilow, Bruce Sussman)
• performed by Desperate Dave
• original source: VA 2LP LA VIE EN ROSE New Rose ROSE 50 (France) 1985
• and my source: the same

.....New Rose had it's origins with two French record store owners who tried their hand at launching a record label called 'Flamingo' as a sideline in the late 1970's. By 1980 they fell for British punk, and specifically The Damned, in a very big way. They renamed their store "New Rose", after The Damned's first single, and launched a new label by the same name, choosing a business model closer to Rough Trade or Rhino Records, in which the store and label share an identity and symbiosis with a targeted audience. They continued to incorporate references to The Damned throughout the label's terminology and iconography, including their subsidiary label 'Fan Club' and others. In fact, the four sides of this double LP sampler are named for the members of the band: Rat, Brian, Dave and Captain. This leads me to speculate that Desperate Dave may actually be lead singer Dave Vanian. Neither of the label owners are named Dave, nor are any other label employees credited on the album or persons thanked on their website. Each side ends with one of these medleys from Desperate Dave, but none of them include songwriting or production credits. And of the nearly 1000 releases, albums and singles, on all of their various subsidiary labels, not one other recording is credited to Desperate Dave. It's obviously a joke of some kind, I genuinely don't know if it's by Vanian or on him. With the unplugged electric guitar and janitor's closet production values, it could possibly be Brian James taking a poke at his bandmate. I just found it hilarious that someone, when they can't remember the lyric to a punk standard, panics and veers off into "COPACABANA".

.....The original versions of these songs, for the record, were (in order) by Irish band The Outcasts, British band Sex Pistols and American Barry Manilow. This volume has one more cover song and it's the next track up, but that one is going to be more reconstructed than deconstructed.

V01-T11 Mr. Rogers

.....Yes, it's another cover. No, it's not the last (not by a long shot). And, yes, it's the second punky deconstruction of a childhood memory in a four-song string of childhood memories. I couldn't pass this one up though, because I knew one of the members and because this spot on the playlist was the most comfortable fit.

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 11

• 02:48 "MR. ROGERS" (Fred Rogers)
• performed by PBS
• original source: B-side, 7" Troubled Youth Records TR-001 (US) 1986
• and my source: the same

.....First I should explain the name. In the late 70's there was a British punk band who called themselves "GBH", short for the criminal charge of "grievous bodily harm". American police use different terminology, so the meaning is lost on many people over here. To slightly nerdy northeasterners, it meant WGBH, Boston, Massachusetts' Public Broadcasting System affiliate. Because that channel produced or co-produced a great deal of programming syndicated for the rest of the network, the station's call letters became synonymous with national public television. Ergo, the name "PBS" was an acknowledgement of the band GBH.

.....Having recorded a pop-punk original for the A-side ("Girl Of My Own"), recording a b-side alluding to the network would have been too good a joke to resist. The theme to the "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" show (minus the instrumental introduction) would be instantly recognized no matter what they did to it, for those 'of a certain age' at least. Because they worked so prolifically for children, Fred Rogers and his free-form jazz pianist John Costa are usually underestimated as composers (Rogers wrote the songs, Costa the subtle vamps and mood music). A good rule of thumb is that when people will gladly sing along to something you wrote that they haven't heard themselves in decades and they remember all the words, you're a good composer. The new arrangements work for me, too, and lest you think that I'm letting personal bias interfere with my judgement, I should point out that Robert Christgau placed this single at number 22 on his list of top singles for 1986. It beat out Bruce Hornsby's "The Way It Is" at number 23. (From The Village Voice, March 3, 1987)

.....Speaking of punky deconstruction, it continues on the next track but veers away from television. And to switch things up a bit, it's our first medley.

V01-T09 Tra-La-La/The Banana Splits Theme

.....I've mentioned before that the nature of this compilation tape is to make a continuous listening experience from selections representative of my... heterogeneous music collection without choosing items so similar as to create themes where none was intended. Having introduced a poppy television theme (in the previous post), I needed something that could naturally follow a television theme without being a television theme.

Volume 1:THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 9

• 01:56 "BANANA SPLITS" [aka "TRA-LA-LA"] (Ritchie Adams and Mark Barkan)
• performed by The Dickies
• original source: A-side, 7" A&M AMS 7431 (UK) April 21,1979
• and my source: CD GREAT DICTATIONS A&M CD5236 (US) 1989

.....According to the Dickies' website, this song went on to become their biggest hit, selling in excess of a quarter million copies. I didn't know that at the time that I added it to the compilation, it just seemed like the route to take. And if you're going to take that route, you might as well be driving a Banana Buggy, n'est-ce pas?

V01-T06 Motorcycle Mama

.....After the 1987 release of the various artists' album "Sgt. Pepper Knew My Father", on which British post-punk and neo-psychedelic groups cover the entire Beatles' album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" track by track for its 20th anniversary, tribute albums briefly became popular among independent labels and their college music audiences. Eventually the majors noticed and soon anyone trying to find a copy of the Hendrix tribute "If 6 Was 9" would be sold "Stone Free", probably by a vacant-eyed teenage employee who would tell them, "That's THE Hendrix tribute. It has to be, it's the only one in our system." Even Leonard Cohen's tribute "I'm Your Fan" (already on Atlantic/WEA) was blotted out by the embarrassingly inferior "Tower Of Power"(on Polygram). In the middle of this, major affiliate Elektra (also part of WEA) celebrated its 40th anniversary by releasing a massive tribute anthology, not to an artist, but to a small independent label... Elektra.

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 6

• 03:44 "MOTORCYCLE MAMA" (John Wyker)
• performed by The Sugarcubes
• original source: VA 2CD RUBAIYAT Elektra/WEA 9 60940-2 (US) 1990
• and my source: the same

.....The original version of the song was by an ad hoc southern rock band named Sailcat, essentially Wyker and a friend plus whoever was available. They were among the last acts to be signed to Elektra during Jac Holzman's time as president although neither Wyker nor the band make the index of Holzman's book, "Follow The Music". Their only album, named for the single, was released in 1972, the year before Elektra released the 2LP "Nuggets" collection of old singles, compiled and curated by Lenny Kaye. Kaye would later produce the "Rubaiyat" anthology in 1990.

.....(Technical Note: I remember this vaguely as a 3LP set on vinyl, but after twenty years the configurations of an album I've only owned in CD form are admittedly fuzzy. A quick scan of the commercial sites doesn't show anyone selling a vinyl copy at the moment but lindaronstadt.com seems certain it was 4 LP's. Sounds good to me.)

.....The premise of the compilation was for artists currently signed to the label to cover artists from the label's impressive back catalog. More often than not it works very well. In fact, if Michael Feinstein's hellacious cover of "Both Sides Now" had been near the middle rather than the end, it would have made a convenient bathroom break to an otherwise pleasant two-and-a-half hours of continuous play. One gets the sneaking suspicion that perhaps the intention was to have 40 songs for 40 years (there are 39 if you count both of the Cure's arrangements of the Doors' "Hello, I Love You", the faithful version and the deconstructed punkier version). There are some creative song choices, so the artists presumably are invested in their respective sessions. Some come from the label's first twenty years as a folk-heavy independent and some from the next twenty as a charter member of the Warner Group. Until WEA acquired Sire in the late 70's, Elektra was their home for punk, jazz inflected R&B and more experimental artists. Sort of the Simon to Atlantic's Theodore and Warner's Alvin. So it's not surprising that while some artists play to their strengths (Anita Baker's gorgeous cover of "You Belong To Me") others play with their own image and that of the material (Faster Pussycat's "You're So Vain").

.....A favorite urban legend surrounding this anthology involves They Might Be Giants and that idea of playing with image and expectations. Supposedly they agreed soon after being approached to contribute and had recorded a cover of a Queen song (I first heard it as being "Bohemian Rhapsody", but others claim it was "We Will Rock You" or "We Are The Champions"). Only after they'd finished their session did Kaye get confirmation to participate from Metallica... conditional on being able to do a Queen song (preferably "Tie Your Mother Down"). Having just turned in their first top ten album and top forty single the year before, the label executives wanted their participation. As the story goes, Kaye appealed to TMBG's penchant for drawing on multiple sources for their original material; surely they could apply some of that creativity to selecting another cover? TMBG submitted a Phil Ochs song for the final set and Metallica went with "Stone Cold Crazy", which the following year earned (?) them a Grammy and was revived as the B-side of "Enter Sandman", their highest charting single to that point and for the next five years.

.....The Sugarcubes, of course, are the Icelandic band that introduced Bjork to American audiences. For a group with two vocalists to choose to rework this song, of everything in a forty-year catalog, into a male-female duet was a stroke of inspired genius. It comes across like a demented version of Nancy Sinatra's "Jackson". It also makes for the third consecutive song on the compilation to (a) deal with pavement in some way and (b) come from the then-current decade. Readers may notice that in upcoming volumes I dig pretty deep into the past and I sometimes make a conscious effort to avoid getting stuck there. For most of the rest of this volume I hover about in the previous decade, the 80's, starting with the next track, which takes us from Iceland to Amsterdam. Kind of.

V01-T04b Jamaican In New York

.....The preceding interstitial with New York DJ's speaking with some kind of Caribbean accents seemed the perfect lead-in to this next song:

Volume 1: THE PITCHFORK APPROACH, track 4b

• 04:19 JAMAICAN IN NEW YORK (Urban Radio Mix) (Sting[Gordon Sumner], with additional lyrics by E.C. Aiken, Jr.)
• performed by Shinehead
• original source: promo-only CD5 Elektra/African Love PRCD-8716 (US)1993
• and my source: the same

.....Press releases at the time suggested that Shinehead's childhood was spent being sent back back and forth between family members in Jamaica and New York. He was never really abandoned, per se. He was always with people who cared about him. But there was almost inevitably the paradox of feeling both at home and alien in both environments; of simultaneously belonging and not belonging. This enabled him to turn a sharp wit to things that he knew and bring them to life with the clear eye of an outside observer.

.....With that in mind, the liner notes that I wrote for my compilation tape in 1993 still hold up well enough: The original mix is on Shinehead's "Sidewalk University" album. I haven't heard it yet, but I do recommend his second album, "Unity", very highly. Shinehead has a history of stealing from thieves.On "Unity" he lifts from the Beatles' "Come Together", which in turn robs from Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me". This song, more obviously from Sting's "Englishman In New York", which in turn borrows heavily from Quentin Crisp's memoirs and spoken word performances. (I even think he shows up in the video.)

.....All I can add to that is that the video I was referring to was Sting's and that it's possible that I've picked up "Sidewalk University" since writing this. I know I've got "The Real Rock" album and some other singles. I haven't seen much more from him but I don't know if that's because of the vagaries of the market or because it's that much easier to make witty observations when you're younger and everything is still new and grabbing your attention. It's common for artists to become less prolific with age, even when what they do produce is still of good quality. The reasons for that could be anything from physically tiring to becoming a harsher self-critic during the editing process.

.....Next up is another song about transplanting from a sunny, open setting to an urban landscape.